Take Your Time

by Eknath Easwaran

  The benefit of this simple skill is that when there are difficulties and differences in an intimate relationship, your loyalty will not waver. Your love will not wobble at all.

  There is so much friction and conflict in personal relationships today that disloyalty may seem inevitable. I have often been asked by a man and a woman who were drifting apart, “Have we lost our capacity to love? Is it not possible for us to be loyal?” I don’t reply to this as a moral issue; I present it as an engineering issue. Without the precious ability to keep your attention in the channel you choose, it is not possible to be deeply in love or consistently loyal in your relationships.

  It is because contemporary culture offers no way of training attention that we find good people, sensitive people, drifting apart. I have been able to help because I don’t say, “You are wrong; she is right. You are disloyal; she is loyal.” I say, “You can train your attention. You can teach it how not to wander.” The mind can be trained to such an extent that even if somebody you love lets you down, you can treat that person with respect and rebuild the relationship so that it is even more loving and secure.

  You can change the channel of your mind from anger to compassion – just as you switch channels on your TV.

  Life today is full of difficulties and conflicts. I think it was Trotsky who said that anyone who wants to lead a peaceful life has chosen the wrong time to be born. These are tempestuous times, fraught with turmoil and violence – which means there is all the more reason to have a well-trained mind.

  When you have a mind that obeys you, you don’t have to run away when trouble threatens – and neither do you have to retaliate. You can receive opponents with respect and oppose them resolutely, returning good will for ill will and love for hatred. Very often, in my experience, this approach will sober an opponent enough that he responds to you with respect as well.

  You train your mind to do this by switching your attention just as you change the channel on your TV set. There are many injurious channels in the mind, negative channels like anger, greed, arrogance, fear, and malice. But for every negative emotion there is a positive emotion, and you can learn to change channels.

  I was at a friend’s home when I learned to use a remote control to regulate the channels on his TV. My host said, “You just point this thing at the television and change it to whatever you like.”

  Because you have been brought up in a scientific, technological culture – not always an advantage! – you see nothing miraculous about this. There may be no visible connection between the TV and the remote control, but it works, and you take for granted that there is a scientific explanation: the device sends a signal that allows me to change channels.

  That is exactly what I do with my mind. When somebody is rude to me – which is seldom – don’t think I am not aware of it. I am very much aware, but I can change the channel in my mind from anger to compassion as easily as changing channels on the TV. It’s not good to let people walk all over us, and we may need to resist when they try. But we can resist without losing compassion and respect if we know how to keep our mind steady.

  When your attention has been trained, if somebody does you a bad turn – which is very common in the world – you don’t blow it up into something big. That is what attention does. When you give little discourtesies your attention, they get blown up into frightening proportions. If you don’t give them attention, you simply brush them aside.

  Similarly, little cravings that should not present much of a problem – an urge to eat this, smoke that, do this, say that – get blown up to gigantic crises. We feel we have to act on them or burst. These selfish urges are part of the human condition, but often all we have to do when they come is to turn our attention away. If we can do this, we can puncture even a big temptation and watch it shrink smaller and smaller and smaller while we get bigger and bigger and bigger. It’s a strange, Alice-in-Wonderland world: where we saw a temptation towering over us and threatening to devour us, we find ourselves standing tall as a giant while a tiny temptation says, “Excuse me, may I leave now?”

  When we train attention, it will rest completely in the here and now, which brings limitless security and infinite joy.

  Attention can be trained very naturally, with affection, just as you train a puppy. When something distracts your attention, you say “Come back” and bring your attention back again. With a lot of training, you can teach your mind to come running back to you when you call, just like a friendly pup. Don’t try to be drastic with your mind. Don’t act like a tyrant. Just keep patiently bringing attention back to the task at hand.

  Friends of mine had a dog named Muka, of whom I was very fond. Muka was a playful creature with boundless energy, and whenever he saw something running, whether it was a rabbit or a truck, he had to run after it. But he was so devoted to me that whenever I called him, even if he had taken off down the road, he would come running back.

  Our attention can be like that. When it sees a memory, it has to chase it, yapping, yapping, yapping at its heels. If it catches that memory, the memory has caught us. The moment attention takes off is the time to call, “Come back!”

  After years of calling it back, the great day will arrive when attention will stay where we want it without our even needing to call. This is a glorious achievement, for it means there can be no resentment, no hostility, no guilt, no anxiety, no fear. Our attention will not dwell on any wisp from the past or the future. It will rest entirely here and now.

  When our attention does not retreat to the past or wander into the future, we are delivered from time into the eternal now. To rest completely in the present like this brings limitless security and infinite joy. In the Upanishads, the perennial fountain of spiritual wisdom in India, the sages compute the joy of a person who has every material satisfaction the world can offer and say, “Let that be one measure of joy. One million times that is the joy of the person who rests completely on the present, for every moment is full of joy.”

  Ideas and Suggestions

  Avoid doing two or more things at once, even if they seem trivial and you know you can manage it. If your job requires juggling many activities at once, try to give complete attention to one of them and take it to the next step before putting it on hold and switching to the next priority – which is what your brain has to do anyway. Practice being in control instead of driven.

  When talking with someone, give that person your full attention, even if his attention wanders or she is saying something you dislike.

  Remember the Buddha’s words: “When you are walking, walk; when you are sitting, sit. Don’t wobble.”

  When driving, give full attention to the road. Don’t listen to music or talk to your passengers; explain that you need to concentrate. Similarly, when you’re a passenger, don’t distract the driver.

  Don’t bring your work home, in your briefcase or in your mind. And don’t bring the problems of home into your work. Keep your mind here and now.

  When your attention gets caught somewhere other than here and now – for example, in some past event you can’t stop dwelling on – bring your mind back to the present.

  Everything you do should be worthy of your full attention. If it seems worthy of only partial attention, ask yourself if it is really worth doing.

  Remember that even if an activity seems trivial, when you give it one-pointed attention, you are training your mind.

  CHAPTER 4

  Finding Balance

  The energy we need is always present; we just need to learn to release and harness it.

  When I talk about a slower pace of life, I don’t mean an idle sail far from any stirring breeze, with no adventure beckoning us. If anything is less desirable than a speeded-up life, it is a life of boredom and indifference. When we slow down and train attention at the same time, we are naturally cultivating enthusiasm for every day. We begin to face each task with energy and focus. This is
a difficult balance to achieve – not hectic, not blasé – but it is a quality to be cultivated if we want to live at our best.

  I found a good illustration of the challenge and rewards of this kind of balance when I went with friends to a favorite restaurant overlooking San Francisco Bay. We arrived early for lunch, so even though the place is very popular, we got a good table near the window. Soon I was completely absorbed in the scene. Outside the sun was bright and the wind was high. ­Hundreds of seagulls were tossing about in the sky, and as many sailboats on the waves.

  I couldn’t help admiring the skill of some of the sailors. While we watched, one boat was racing toward us over the water with its sail almost dipping into the sea. My heart leapt into my mouth and I wanted to cry, “They’re gone!” But the agile crew kept leaning out over the water on the opposite side, and the boat never quite turned over.

  Others on the water were not so skillful. They would catch a strong wind in their sails and pick up impressive speed, but I would see their boats suddenly careen erratically as if they had a life of their own. I could sympathize. How like life in today’s restless, unpredictable world, where we often feel we are running before the wind in a stormy sea.

  Below the restaurant window scores of other boats were tied up, hugging the shore, their lines slapping idly in the breeze. On their decks, men and women in summer clothes were enjoying drinks, chatting, or reclining in lounge chairs in the sun, perhaps dreaming that they, too, were sailors while their boats remained tied up comfortably at the dock.

  Most of us have seasons like these sailors. At times we surge with energy, so much so that our lives are almost out of control. At other times we face blocks, can’t seem to get on top of things, can’t seem to move. Often these phases are accompanied by mood swings between high and low, ebbs and flows of self-esteem.

  And, of course, there are times when we maneuver gracefully through events which at other times would have hopelessly becalmed or capsized us, navigating unerringly towards our goal. That is life.

  According to yoga philosophy, the human personality is a constant interplay of these three elements – inertia, energy, and harmony. All three are always present, but one tends to be dominant at any given time – in a day, throughout a stage of life, over a life itself. And they lie on a continuum of energy. Just as matter can exist as a solid, a liquid, or a gas – ice, water, or steam – our own energy-states move in and out of inertia, activity, and harmony.

  Inertia, of course, is least desirable. Energetic activity is much more desirable, but without control it only consumes our time and gets us into trouble. Harmony is the state we desire to live in. Fortunately, because all three are states of the same energy, each of these states can be changed into another. Just as ice can be thawed into water and water turned into steam, inertia and activity are both full of energy which can be converted into a state of dynamic balance full of vitality and power. That is what I meant when I compared Gandhi with a skilled driver behind the wheel of a Ferrari.

  “It is not enough to be busy,” Thoreau says. “The question is, What are you busy about?”

  It is wonderful to have abundant energy, for then no obstacle is too big to overcome. But there can be danger when a person has more energy than he or she knows what to do with. If we lack direction and an overriding goal, we are likely to misunderstand the signals that life sends us. Life is saying, “Come on! Venture out on the high seas, brave the adventures I send, and perfect the skills you need to fulfill your destiny.” But we don’t hear this message clearly. Somehow the signal gets garbled, and we can’t tell where the call is coming from. So we pour our energy out into restless seeking, chasing fulfillment on Montgomery Street, with the bulls and bears at the stock exchange; or Union Street, with its fashionable boutiques; or Ghirardelli Square, where there seems to be a place to eat for every day of the year; or the night spots of North Beach. We can spend a lifetime like this and get nowhere.

  Further, when we have a lot of energy we feel we have to act. We just cannot be idle. We get involved in activities and relationships primarily out of restlessness, and, because we cannot restrain ourselves even when we see the warning signs, we get into a lot of trouble.

  Most of us know people like this. They have to keep going from morning till night, even doing things that are trivial. They have to keep busy, even if it means doing things that help no one including themselves. They simply cannot sit still.

  “It is not enough to be busy,” Thoreau pointed out. “The question is, What are you busy about?” This is a useful question. To know when to plunge into an activity and when to refrain from it requires judgment – detachment and discrimination. In India we have a saying, “Lack of discrimination is the greatest danger.” When we lack discrimination, we do not know when to throw ourselves into something and when not to get entangled in it – and the more energy we have, the more it is going to get us involved in sticky, even dangerous situations from which it is difficult and painful to escape.

  I think it is Henri Bergson, the French philosopher, who said that the human species should not be called Homo sapiens, “the creature that thinks,” but Homo faber, “the creature that makes things.” This is an astute observation. Most of us are concerned with making things: houses, roads, helicopters, guitars, pasta, anything. As long as we can make something, we find some satisfaction in living.

  Take a walk in any large shopping mall and look in the shop windows. How many places are selling something that is necessary? How many are selling items that are beneficial? We can accommodate a whole mall in two or three shops if we rule out things which have been made just because Homo faber fever has got us.

  Energy out of control has two characteristics: hurry and worry.

  Along the highway I used to see dusty Volkswagen buses with their windows covered with stickers: “Paraguay,” “Turista,” “Mexico.” We can tell the owners are travelers from the stickers they have collected – unless they just bought them in some little shop at the mall. Similarly, if we observe a man or woman who is the victim of over-abundant energy, we will see two small identifying stickers: “Hurry” and “Worry.”

  Worry goes with hurry because people in a hurry don’t have time to think clearly and make clear decisions, so they are always worried about results. They fret about the conclusions of their research, about the value of their work, about whether they are contributing to the welfare of their students. If you slow down enough to think clearly and act wisely, you have no need to worry because you know you are doing your best.

  Energy, to be useful, has to be available when we need it – at our beck and call.

  One fascinating thing about people with a lot of energy is that it’s not at their beck and call. When energy is overflowing, it tends to drive them; but at other times it dries up. This is the other pole of our lives: the times when we just can’t get going.

  Often people have energy only when it comes to doing things they like. We all know people who have boundless motivation when it comes to doing what they want to do. They get absorbed in details that seem excruciating to us and pass hours without noticing how much time has gone by. But when it comes to activities that don’t interest them, they may actually seem sluggish and even lacking in energy.

  Most of us are like this. We have energy for activities that interest us, but when that energy is blocked it flows elsewhere, to something more attractive. We get busy doing those other, more attractive things and can’t find time for what needs doing.

  In India we call this “painting the bullock cart wheels.” Just when the harvest is ready to be brought in, the farmer notices that the wheels of his bullock cart are looking rather shabby. Instead of going out into the fields, he takes a day to go into town for paint and then spends a week painting beautiful designs on the cart wheels. When he finally gets around to harvesting the rice, he has to work twelve hours a day just to keep up.

  Even
people who are usually energetic can have a mental block when a challenge comes to them. Students often grind to a halt on the eve of finals and find it physically impossible to open a book. I have seen students dismantling their motorcycles the night before exams, which calls for a lot more energy and application than the study of Wordsworth’s “Ode to Immortality.” This is a valuable clue: the problem is not lack of energy, but how to control and direct it.

  Most of us don’t have to write papers on Wordsworth. But we do have to fill out our tax returns each year, turn in reports at work, write thank-you notes, clean out garages, and perform countless other tasks that we find distasteful. How many of us decide to put such things off while we work on our car or plant the new vegetable garden instead? Cars and gardens do need attention, but tax returns are urgent. In fact, when the calendar says April 14th, anything else is a distraction.

  The energetic, restless, aggressive person is often looked upon as an achiever – a valuable asset who accomplishes much. People who are driven by their own energy can be like steamrollers, rolling relentlessly over any obstacle in their way. Yet when they face a task which promises no personal profit or power, the steamroller may become a rolling stone, perhaps even a sitting stone. Then it cannot push away obstacles; the most it can do is roll.

  Inertia is frozen power. The energy is there; it just needs to be released.

  Just as water can freeze, thaw, and freeze again, our personal energy surges back and forth between activity and inertia. The energy is there, but it is sometimes frozen and sometimes out of control.